Pitcairn Islands Study Center

Pitcairn Islands Study Center:

"MATILDA British whaler under the command of Captain Matthew Weatherhead. The Matilda had sailed from England on March 27 1791, and had touched at Port Jackson and Peru before arriving in Tahiti on February 14, 1792, anchoring in Vaitepiha Bay. For some inscrutable reason Captain Weatherhead stayed only three days at Tahiti.

On the night of February 24, 1792, the Matilda foundered on Mururoa atoll, 640 miles south-east of Tahiti (see the March 1792 commentary in Part I). All of the crew were saved and reached Tahiti on March 5. Soon afterwards the schooner Jenny from Bristol arrived in Tahiti, and when she sailed for America Captain Weatherhead and four members of the crew went with her. Instead of waiting for another ship, three of the men took one of the four whaleboats of the Matilda, fitted it with sails of native matting, and sailed for Port Jackson. They were never heard from again.

If they had waited only a few weeks, they could have sailed back to Europe with Captain Bligh in the Providence. Bligh arrived on April 10 and when he left a little over three months later, he took fifteen of the Matilda’s crew with him. The remaining six wanted to stay on Tahiti. One of them, the Swede Anders Lind, became a kind of military advisor to Pomare I.

In February 1826 Captain Frederick Beechey in HMS Blossom found parts of the wreck of the Matilda on the northern shore of Mururoa.
MOALA (“Mywolla”) Island on the western side of the southern Fijis, considered"

Perhaps we should look to America for any decendants of Matthew Weatherhead.. who ever his parents were.. brothers and sisters in Britian.

I am still not certain where Captain Thomas Weatherhead got to after he ran agroung at Sow & Pigs & the ship the Phoenix 11 was turned into a Hulk
or prison for harden criminals & transported them on to Moreton Bay Penal Settlement [ City of Brisbane today] and Norfolk Island.. Pitcairn?? LOL
what a strange world it is.. {Pamela}